1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle platoon control system for controlling a platoon of motor vehicles running on a road, and more particularly to a vehicle platoon control system for controlling a platoon of motor vehicles automatically in a lane on a road based on positional information from the road.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Research and development efforts are being made to develop a technology for automatically driving motor vehicles such as automobiles on roads while detecting obstacles with a radar, a CCD camera, or their combination to recognize front obstacles and forward traffic conditions.
It has already been practiced to control vehicles to automatically run under certain conditions in factories or the like. Such an automatically running vehicle travels along a predetermined path at a constant low speed while detecting magnetic or optical markers positioned at spaced intervals along the path. For example, the automatically running vehicle travels at a very low speed of about 10 km/h.
Various automatic vehicle control systems have been studied in order to reduce traffic jams and accidents on freeways and also to lessen driver's fatigue.
Particularly, an automatic platoon vehicle control system for controlling a platoon of motor vehicles to automatically travel on a road has been drawing much attention in the art.
The principles of the system for controlling automatically running vehicles in factories may be incorporated as basic principles of such an automatic platoon vehicle control system.
However, the system for controlling automatically running vehicles in factories is basically designed to control them to run at a very low speed, and does not lend itself to controlling general motor vehicles, such as automobiles, to run at high speeds ranging from 60 km/h to 100 km/h.
Controlling a platoon of motor vehicles to run automatically needs a special control process because the distances between the motor vehicles would be disturbed unless controlled by such a special control process. Without such a special control process, the spacing of motor vehicles near the rear end of the platoon could not be maintained with high accuracy due to an accumulation of control delays. It is highly critical to solve this problem in the control of a platoon of motor vehicles which are traveling at high speeds on a road.